TODAY IN HISTORY
On Jan. 24, 1848, James Marshall found a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in northern California, a discovery that led to the ’49 gold rush.
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In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded a wartime conference in Casablanca, Morocco.
In 1965, British statesman Winston Churchill died in London at age 90.
In 1978, a Soviet satellite, Cosmos 954, plunged through Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated, scattering radioactive debris over parts of northern Canada.
In 1984, Apple Computer began selling its first Macintosh model, which boasted a built-in 9-inch monochrome display, a clock rate of 8 megahertz and 128k of RAM.
In 1985, the space shuttle Discovery was launched from Cape Canaveral on the first secret, all-military shuttle mission.
In 1989, confessed serial killer Theodore Bundy was executed in Florida’s electric chair.
In 2003, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was sworn as the first secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security.
In 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the lifting of a ban on women serving in combat.
In 2020, health officials in Chicago said a woman in her 60s had become the second U.S. patient diagnosed with a new virus that had emerged in China; she’d returned from that country in mid-January.
Ten years ago: Declaring the American dream under siege, President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to deliver a populist challenge to shrink the gap between rich and poor, promising to tax the wealthy more and help jobless Americans get work and hang onto their homes.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump moved swiftly to advance the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, signing executive actions to aggressively overhaul America’s energy policy and deal a sharp blow to Barack Obama’s legacy on climate change.
One year ago: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he had tested positive for COVID-19 and that the symptoms were mild; he’d been criticized for his handling of his country’s pandemic and for not setting an example of prevention in public.